Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Entrepreneur Toby Ruckert knows what
‘unified communications’ is and you don’t have to spend much time with Toby—as
I have recently done in Singapore--to believe the importance of what might be
described as a movement--or perhaps migration is a better word--toward
unified communication as a popular, if not indispensable, service.

Unified
communication means bringing all our communication
threads and sources (email, social media, chat and ‘check-in’ apps) together in
one place.And, that is what Toby’s
company Unified Inbox does.With 8,000
users waiting for beta versions, the popularity of the notion is significant
and growing.

Once communication sources are wrangled
into a single inbox, users can manage all communications in one place, one screen.Managing might mean ranking messages by
importance, or grouping by source (people) or topics, or other meaningful
criteria.Such features are showing up
more and more within a given medium.See, for example, the proliferation of ‘filtering’ tools popping up.

G-mail users can request and get helpful analytics regarding your email use patterns.

Other applications, like Checky, Moment and Offtime allow you toggle off and otherwise manage your incoming media to get a digital break. So, the ‘Filter Wars’ have begun.

Unified communications, however, goes beyond filtering within a single medium.Unified communication services allow users to carry on conversations with friends
or colleagues, who are each using different messaging media (say LinkedIn, Facebook, WeChat, SnapChat, etc.) without launching
and re-launching different apps. Users could cut and paste text across platforms, but bridging fractures and inconsistencies between communication streams is hard work.

Unified Inbox will ultimately allow organisations to 'unify' their communications and help interested users to improve their communication patterns and performance (effectiveness and efficiency). The latter is a research project I am currently working on with colleagues in academia and industry.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Living in an 'infrastructure challenged' setting, it is not lost on me that even as the uptake of Internet connectivity is rapidly expanding, it also slow to reach many of the world's population. And, importantly, the digital divide is growing, according to a recent McKinsey report, titled 'Off-line and falling behind.'

The report offers several reasons why certain groups are slow to adopt Internet services and suggests that four factors, including 'incentives,' 'low incomes and affordability,' 'user capabilities' and 'infrastructure.'

Moreover, the factors are often compounding and inter-related, according to McKinsey.

"We measured the performance of 25 countries against a basket of metrics relating to each category of barriers to develop the Internet Barriers Index.55.The Internet Barriers Index ranks 25 developed and developing countries based on their scores in four categories of barriers: incentives, low incomes and affordability, user capability, and infrastructure. To create the index, we defined a basket of standard metrics to quantify each category of barriers, normalized each metric to a scale of 100 points, weighted each of the metrics equally within each category to generate barrier category scores, and then normalized and weighted each of the category scores equally to generate the final index score. Our analysis indicated that the Internet Barriers Index has a strong ability to predict the Internet penetration within a country, explaining more than half the variance in Internet penetration across countries. We found that all factors correlate strongly and separately with Internet penetration, and all regressions indicate an elastic effect on Internet penetration—that is, improvements on each individual pillar of the Internet Barriers Index will have a disproportionately positive impact on Internet penetration. In addition, we found a systematically positive and, in some cases, large correlation between barrier categories. This implies that the factors are not totally independent and that countries with low Internet penetration tend to have multidimensional bottlenecks when it comes to increasing their Internet adoption. Further, it means that meaningfully addressing these barriers and boosting Internet penetration will require coordination across Internet ecosystem participants."

While it appears that this is a developed versus a developing world phenomenon, I have observed that connectivity is 'lumpy' all around the world and that "we're all a little bit third world."

Friday, September 12, 2014

Why do people constantly check their smartphones?

I was recently asked this question by Finland's top newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. Click for story in Finnish.There are a lot of specific reasons, but here are 3 drivers of this behaviour. First, think of rosary or ‘worry beads,’ which humans have held in their hands for millennia; the tactile touch is reassuring and something simple to do when we are nervous or bored—this is the physical/material factor of handheld devices. This could also be called the boredom factor. Second, there is the avoidance factor, i.e., when we are in (even slightly) awkward social situations and want to avoid eye contact with others, we relieve the social pressure by gazing into our handheld screens instead of meeting the eyes of a stranger. This makes perfect sense as the cost of engagement with others adds up in dense social settings. We do this naturally in busy city streets where we cannot look into every passing strangers’ eyes, so we tend to avoid all eye contact, reserving our attention to the familiar, like a friendly message or favourite app on our smartphone. Finally, there is the fear factor as some of us are driven by the ‘fear of missing out' (FOMO), that feeling that something interesting and important MIGHT be happening and we want to know about it, i.e., we don’t want to ‘miss out' on what's going on. Of course, much of life happens to be more or less mundane, so the odds of something truly significant happening is low, but still probable enough to not ‘risk’ missing it. This latter drive is understandably heightened in younger users, where the need for social inclusion and acceptance is relatively high.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

This week I had the privilege of visiting Taupaki Primary School in a rural area just outside Auckland. I was invited by a friend who is on the school board, who said, 'you've got to see our 10-12-year olds rapid prototyping and digital printing their own design projects.'

Wow! It was worth it!

Principal Stephen Lethbridge is a true visionary who has brought technology to the School, but also and perhaps more importantly sees technology's role in uniting parents and children, parents with the School and the school with the community.

Here's how:

The thing that struck me was that the digital innovation was clearly present (Stephen's office looks like a cubicle at IDEO), the 'analogue' world was equally represented and celebrated. There was a school garden and the workshops were still producing bird houses. Stephen emphasised that he sees the analogue and digital worlds both very necessary and he works to unite the two.

For example, when I visited what looked like a 'home ec' (home economics) classroom, there were sewing machines that reminded me of similar classrooms from my high schools days many years ago. But, the teacher, Kim (whom Stephen hired via Twitter) who, having spent time working in London, came home and studied teaching technology. Kim pulled on a glove that had been sewn by one of her students. With Stephen applying a battery charge to the leads, the glove lit up with tiny LED lights. The project these 11-year olds were working on was a bike safety challenge--designing clothing to make riding a bicycle safer (riding a bike is incredibly dangerous in Auckland). Analogue glove meets digital lighting!

Taupaki School is currently on its third generation of digital printers, whereas I doubt that my Business School owns one digital printer. That is the scary part of this visit, to think about how we are going to challenge these students when they arrive at the University in a few years' time.

The recurring challenge for educators at all levels is to not lose touch with or appreciation of the physical, analogue world as we embrace the digital frontier.

Updated 23 November 2014

Here's what management consulting firm BCG says about the intertwinement between the physical/analogue and digital worlds in their fascinating project called, Now is The Time. In their 4-dimensional report, BCG walks their talk by presenting analysts' commentary in text juxtaposed with photographic imagery.

"The Two Sides of Connectivity. Companies live in a multichannel world of bits and bricks, and they need to be masters of both. The physical world is being remade through massive spending on infrastructure. About $40 trillion in infrastructure spending will be required over the next two decades – rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of mature markets and constructing new roads, railways, airports, shipping stock and telecommunications networks in emerging markets.

Digital technologies, meanwhile, are becoming embedded in everyday objects, everything from refrigerators and televisions, to roads and buildings. The “Internet of everything” is fundamentally blurring the hard distinctions between the physical and digital worlds."

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

American pop-art icon Andy Warhol once said: "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." Nik Dholakia, Professor of Marketing, E-Commerce and International Business at the University of Rhode Island, offers a new take: "In the future, we will be darn lucky to remain anonymous for 15 minutes."Other insights from Professor Dholakia, include the following.

Through new information and communication technologies, "virtual life-worlds that are portable and always networked are becoming pervasive, persistent, and constantly malleable."

Global statistics back that up. According to the International Telecommunications Union, at some point in 2014 the number of active mobile phones will exceed the number of people on the planet. Russia, already has 1.8 times more in-use mobile phones than people. Brazil has 1.2 times as many. Importantly, those phones are increasingly smartphones, with full internet access. And, as everyone knows, the internet is becoming porous with social media and with early experiments in augmented reality.

To make sense of what is happening, says Professor Dholakia, a useful step is to "fly above the turbulence" and grasp the technological changes in terms of the social and political factors involved – in other words, to develop some co-ordinates, or "conceptual anchors". Dholakia's recent research, and that of several colleagues and students, has focused on doing just that.

Among the insights:

The "newness" of the new technologies is relative. Every medium already participates in the mobile, the social and the virtual. Film and radio, for example had enormous potential as social media and began as one-to-one and many-to-many media. It was commercial interests that turned film, for example, into a one-to-many, or mass medium.

Mobile has become the core global identity credential. More than a passport, a driver's licence or a national identity card, the mobile phone is becoming the universal ID credential. The new coming-of-age marker is when a child gets his or her mobile phone. More people worry about leaving their phone at home than their wallet.

Mobile is becoming an individuating, locating and enabling technology. The development of apps is very open and this is one of the more positive aspects of the mobile sphere. Many apps enable sampling, comparisons, ratings, curating, locating and more.

We are on the threshold of augmented reality. For more than a century the offline versus online distinctions held. Virtual realities were clearly identifiable and often immersive but quite separate and distinct realities. Now, with broadband hyperconnected mobile devices, we are entering a time and a space where these distinctions are dissolving. Augmented realities are emerging on a mass scale – but unlike the old video arcade games, and because of the individuating nature of the mobile device, they tend not to be shared realities.

Social media has added frenzy and fluidity to media fragmentation. Many countries have seen a shift from a one-channel universe to one of a billion channels or more.

Traditional trust anchors are disappearing. Social media lacks the regulating structures of traditional media, such as awards and industry codes of conduct. It will take time to come up with new, reliable and accepted ways to vouch, to verify, to endorse and to guarantee. This happens in all periods of technical upheaval. Developing new forms of trustworthiness is not the task of science, but of society.

The power of "meta-industries" is growing. The amount of stored data is increasing rapidly, but data transfer over networks is rising at an even faster rate due to the new forms of data, including hi-res video, being sent. Some countries, including those in Scandinavia, have introduced public policy measures to improve broadband availability. The growth in content produced by individuals is being rapidly overtaken by that produced by content delivery networks (largely commercial video providers). Machine-to-machine traffic is also projected to increase by 84% a year.

What any technology becomes depends on who controls it. Examples from across the world show how social, mobile and virtual technologies have been harnessed to improve lives and open channels of communication for previously excluded people. Some researchers are studying how new media can help us become what they call "produsers" and "construers". Unless we embrace such notions, they say, the consumer in us will continue to inflate, squeezing out our other life roles.

Professor Dholakia spoke about digital media at the Business School in July 2014 as part of the Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series.

The above was extracted from the UABS Network e-magazine, written by Vaughan Yarwood, Managing Editor.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist and Vice President at Intel. In a recent column interview of the NY Times, she commented on how technology is changing society in terms of time, space and social relationships.

"First, there are changing ideas about time. With the advent of electrification in the 19th century, there was no more night. Now with digital we think in new ways about availability, responsiveness, the time it should take to get things done.

The devices want to be connected, in touch, upgraded, all the time. We’re on their clock. But that may get renaturalized. Every major world religion divides out some kind of special time — there is time for prayer, time for fasting, time for celebration.

I harbor a suspicion that we need to be disconnected at times."

Space is also changing. As Bell observes.

"We map physical space differently: At the airport, the location of power outlets becomes critical. We think of spaces that have good Wi-Fi or cellular locations. They are “better.” And we’re seeing the idea that the Internet is going to create one world is not quite true. Turkey turns offTwitter. You get different search results in different places."

Bell's third area of change is in social relationships.

The last thing, after space and time, is changing social relationships.

"How do we relate to each other? What do we think about social ideas like privacy, security, risk? There are changing ideas about love, fear, passion."

What does all that mean?

"When tech affects ideas about time, space and social relationships, it carries anxiety. We are reinventing a lot of ideas around security, privacy, safety, love, marriage, kids, god, violence, the nation state, power, justice, money. Everything is up for grabs.

It means social movements will emerge around this, arguments about what government should look like. One hundred years ago there were arguments about government, and how we should organize ourselves. There was Fascism versus utopian government. We’ll have arguments about government and governance, about taxation and regulation."

As Bell suggests, the technological changes associated with connectivity mean 'everything is up for grabs,' which is both exciting and contentious as we re-negotiate time, space and relationships. It is, however, a frontier we have entered and society cannot go back to where we were pre-Net.

As pioneers, we cannot possibly know what the collective patterns will be, but we can be mindful of our own personal and micro-social (email, for example, is a social not personal medium) beliefs and behavioural patterns, which ultimately shape future society more than technology.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Thirty years ago I stood on the summit of Denali (Mt. McKinley) at 20,320 ft, the highest peak in North America. Surveying the magnificent Alaska Range in the midnight glow of Arctic summer (at -40 degrees F; with windchill at -100 F) was and remains one of the highlights of my life. From landing on the glacier to flying back to Talkeetna took 16 days. During that time we were completely out of contact with the world below.

A few years later, during a 20-day trip down the Grand Canyon, we were similarly out of touch, which was a natural part of the adventure. Indeed, working as a wilderness instructor and guide for 10 years in the 1980s, we routinely said good-bye to friends and loved ones as we worked 20 to 28-day courses in the backcountry of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Texas. These were some of the 'peak experiences' in my life.

Yesterday, I participated in a round table discussion with Nik and Ruby Roy Dholakia, both of the University of Rhode Island. Both are doing groundbreaking work on the future of marketing, in particular 'consumption.' Among other ideas, Nik and colleagues argue that social media are shifting the nature of our life experiences, like my summit experience on Denali and running the Grand Canyon.

If we think of a continuum of 'mundane,' 'special' and 'peak' experiences, we have all seen how social media are used to make the mundane 'special,' i.e., posting photos of food, checking in at routine coffee breaks, etc.

Conversely, bringing others along virtually on 'peak' experiences risks making those experiences less rarified, less extraordinary than the isolated triumph of standing on top of the world (literally or metaphorically) on your own or with your climbing partner. Posting or texting from the summit of Denali--as a friend of mine did a few years ago--is still no doubt 'special,' but it is somewhat less extreme than being there knowing that it would be several days before my wife even knew if I had survived the summit push and descent, let alone see my summit selfie.

Modern day adventurers will no doubt counter that documenting expeditions has a long history (including coincidently the Kolb brothers with Powell in the Grand Canyon) and that sharing an experience immediately and widely on social media heightens the experience, rather than contributing to its deterioration or demotion on the Mundane-Special-Peak scale.

Making the mundane special is mostly harmless. It brings a farcical and humorous dimension to social media (for example, a web site devoted to photos of people taking photos of food). On the other hand, social media's fascination with the mundane may have more serious existential consequences.

Meanwhile, existentialists should rightfully be concerned if, as my colleagues suggest, intensive life-defining 'peak' experiences are somehow reduced in their impact as we rush to document rather than simply experience our moments of personal triumph.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Returning from Rotterdam (sitting in Heathrow), where I had the pleasure of being a co-convenor of a European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) Symposium sub-theme on 'Connectivity and Mobility' with Marleen Huysman leader of the KIN2 Group at VU University of Amsterdam and Kristine Dery, who recently joined MIT's Center for Information Systems Research, I am reflecting on the 'state of connectivity' (as opposed to my usual preoccupation with 'states of connectivity').From an academic perspective, have we reached a point where we can consider connectivity a field of research? Certainly, a substantial proportion of papers we saw at the Symposium focused on mobile technologies, work-life balance or 'new ways of work' and organisational control of such and drew upon constructs of 'connectivity.' Connectivity studies address the central organising theme of our time, namely increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive connectivity, with its attending promise, problems and opportunities for all levels and dimensions of individuals, organisations and society at large.In particular, leading and raising star academics, like Paul Leonardi and Melissa Mazmanian, use the term in recent influential publications, which are already being heavily cited. Since citations are the primary currency of scholarship, it is reasonable to suggest that connectivity is emerging as a legitimate field of research.Coming back to the question of what 'connectivity' is, I have previously offered a comprehensive definition, as follows:

‘Connectivity is defined here as the mechanisms,
processes, systems and relationships that link individuals and collectives
(e.g., groups, organizations, cultures, societies) by facilitating material,
informational and/or social exchange.It
includes geo-physical (e.g., space, time and location), technological (e.g., information
technologies and their applications) as well as social interactions and
artefacts, including shared histories, travel, trade, migration, culture,
politics and other social activities.’ (Source: Kolb, D. G. (2008). Exploring the metaphor of connectivity: Attributes, dimensions and duality. Organization Studies, 29, 1, 127-144; direct quote found on p.128)

I remain pretty happy with this broad and inclusive definition. In fact, the term is used to describe all manner of connections, from the most technical to most social/humanistic/philosophical. I have not seen a reference to God as connectivity or connectivity as god, but it is only a matter of time.

Connectivity as Metaphor: Attributes, Dimensions and Duality

In that same 2008 Organization Studies article, I referred to connectivity as a 'metaphor.' This is because, at that time, it could not be considered a 'theory' or a 'field,' but rather it was a way of seeing something, i.e., the social world, through a lens used in another context, in this case, the technical (e.g., electronics) world--where the term came from (although the term also appears in neuroscience and I am not sure which used it first).Attributes: Exploring the metaphor, I suggested that one might think of
connectivity as ‘... a constantly changing set of connective links, some of
which have never been used (latent
potential), many of which are reliant on individuals (actor agency), which come and go (temporal intermittency) and some whose reach cannot be fully
understood or predicted (unknowable
pervasiveness).’ (Kolb, 2008, p.140). Dimensions: I went on to show how connectivity occurs on multiple dimensions, including: geo-physical, technical, interpersonal, group, organisational, networks,
economic, cultural, political, philosophical. Duality: Finally, drawing on adaptive structuration theory, I suggested that connectivity is characterised by ‘connects’ and ‘disconnects,’ which exist as
a ‘duality,’ i.e., they are distinct, but interrelated phenomena.

So that is connectivity as metaphor. What about theory? There are several theoretical frameworks of connectivity, including our model of 'requisite connectivity' (Kolb, Collins and Lind, 2008), 'connective flow' (ibid; Dery, Kolb and MacCormick, 2014) and Paul Leonardi and colleagues' work on the 'connectivity paradox.' Based on what we are seeing from emerging researchers, there are bound to be new and exciting theoretical developments coming to the field soon.

Of course, I am mostly involved with the organisational theory, communication and information systems communities, but others are also employing the term.

Here is my new bold claim. When you consider the machine-to-machine connections that characterize the Internet of things, the deep concerns about our brains on screens, the isolation of being 'alone together,' and the growing philosophical pursuit of the 'good life' in a social-meets-digital age, I believe it is safe to say, we have truly entered the Age of Connectivity.

To put it another way, at this point in history, connectivity isn't everything, but it's almost everything.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Mobile is taking over the web. Mobile data traffic rose 81% year over year, and mobile usage now makes up 25% of total web usage.

Smartphones are still on the rise — now representing 30% of all mobile phones — but tablets are seeing the most growth: With 2013 tablet shipments up 52% from the year before, the devices are growing faster than PCs ever did.

Among Meeker's other observations:

-Tablets on a Tear: Tablet adoption is growing faster than PCs ever did, and there’s still more loads of growth ahead – tablet population penetration is at 6%. Meanwhile, desktop PC population penetration is at 10%, laptops at 11% (see slide 8 of the report - 'Internet Trends' link above).

-Tech Company Valuations Still Below Peak Levels: Is there an excess in tech company valuations? Some, Meeker says, but levels are still well below the peak of 2000. Venture financings are 77% below the peak of 2000 (see slide 22).

-Social Media’s Rapid Force: Half of total social referrals happen in 6.5 hours on Twitter and in 9 hours on Facebook. Facebook accounts for 21% of global referrals on the web. See slide 42 for top social content leaders.

-Photos are Still King: About 1.8 billion photos are now uploaded or shared per day, a trend Meeker expects will only increase as more advanced apps and platforms emerge (see slide 62).

-More Video Screens, but Smartphones are No. 1: The number of screens are proliferating, from TV to laptops and tablets, but smartphones are now the most-watched medium in many countries. More screens means consumers will be able to get more content in less time (see slide 96).

-Pay Attention to Rapid Growth in Sensors: Just four years ago, a Samsung Galaxy S phone came equipped with four sensors. The S5 model, released this year, has 10. The rising growth in sensors will create troves of data that can be used to help researchers find patterns and solve previously unsolvable problems, Meeker says. (See slide 67)

-China’s Mobile Momentum: China is now the most mobile nation in the world — 80% of China’s total Internet users are mobile users (see slide 129).

-Millennials Changing TV: Millennials are abandoning Live TV for online video. Consumption of DVR’d and on-demand is on par with non-millennials, but it’s triple for online — and that is coming straight from Live TV (see slide 122). Meanwhie, apps are quickly replacing TV channels: TV is evolving from a directory of channels to a platform of TV apps, evidenced by the popularity of offerings like HBO Go and BBC’s iPlayer (see slide 106).

-The Biggest “Re-imagining” Will be in Big Data. Some of the most significant changes in the technology industry over the coming years will result from more advanced mining of data (see slide 60).

-The New Online Ad: Who hates ads? What is now called “The Art of the Short Form” is hugely popular online (see slide 112).

-1st and 2nd Generation Americans Lead Tech Companies: 60% of tech’s top 25 companies were founded by first or second-generation Americans. In the top 10, make that 70%. Meanwhile, the number of foreign students sent home for lack of a limited-availability H-1B visa has nearly quadrupled in the past decade (see slide 149).

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

People need to be connected
and everyone needs information.The right amount
and quality of information at the right time gives us unprecedented power.Too much information and digital distraction,
however, can keep us from getting important things done.It can keep us from connecting with those
around us[i].What many of us want is Zen-like ‘flow,’
i.e., not too little and not too much connectivity. My colleagues and I called
this a state of ‘connective flow’ in our studies[ii]
of distributed work teams.

How good are individuals at
monitoring and managing connective flow?Increased adoption of smartphone and other connective technologies has
brought a subsequent growing concern and interest in the importance of
regulating the quantity of interactions
for organizational performance, while not undermining individual wellbeing[iii].

In a recently published article in the EuropeanJournal of Information Systems, Kristine Dery of the MIT Sloan School, Judi MacCormick and I compared how smartphones use changed
from the height of the ‘CrackBerry’ era, in 2006 (the iPhone arrived in 2007),
in the same sample re-interviewed in 2011. Our study was conducted within a
large global financial services corporation and interviews took place mainly in
Paris and Sydney. Corporations like the one we studied embraced technologies
like the BlackBerry, which offered increased connectivity between workers,
while the corporate culture often lead to employees suffering from hyper-connectivity
and burnout.

Our findings revealed a few
major shifts in smartphone usage in the five (5) years between interviews.First, the iPhone had come onto the scene and
while the corporation remained on and only supported the BlackBerry device,
almost every participant in our study had also purchased an iPhone, which they
used for both personal and work purposes.Second, in the first round of interviews, participants expressed a
love-hate relationship with the BlackBerry, some secretly wishing it would be
lost or stolen, so they could ‘get a break.’

Five years on, our
participants were much more comfortable taking work into their own hands,
literally.In managing their connections
with work in the first round, interviewees spoke of ‘switching it off’ and
‘escaping’ its spell on them.In the
second round, they spoke of managing the ‘flow’ of information, turning the
flow up or down ‘like a tap,’ as one interviewee described it.And, finally these knowledge workers
moderated the flow of media and connections between work and non-work life more
seamlessly, with much less stress than they expressed in the earlier phase of
our study.

Although the ‘CrackBerry’
days of email obsession may be gone[iv],
myriad new work and social media have exponentially exploded in the hands of
smartphone users. Other studies of knowledge workers have proven that addictive
and dysfunctional behaviors are still commonly associated with mobile
technologies.[v]In our study, however, we have found that the
use of smartphones is evolving relatively rapidly and that we are more or less
adjusting to and making different choices when it comes to these tools that
characterize our age.

For
those seeking the good life in a digital age, I recommend William Powers’ book,
Hamlet’s BlackBerry: …. It sounds dated, but his insights and story telling
make an excellent read for anyone who feels there must be more to life than the
latest tweet.